Sen. Chuck Grassley today made the following comment on the Senate majority leader’s decision to proceed to the House of Representatives-passed version of an anti-congressional insider trading bill instead of the Senate-passed version. The Senate-passed version contains a provision offered by Grassley requiring the growing political intelligence industry, which sells information to Wall Street, to register in the interest of public disclosure, as lobbyists have been required to do for many years.

“The majority leader is choosing the path that shuts out political intelligence registration. His reasoning for choosing this direction is specious. The Senate passed this legislation weeks ago, and the majority leader just now says he doesn’t have time to defend the Senate’s position. The Senate gave 60 votes to the political intelligence provision. The broader bill containing the provision received a vote of 96 to 3 in the Senate. The majority leader ignored all of this. His decision is a real blow for good government and transparency. It’s a victory for Wall Street and a defeat for the American people. It’s a victory for the hedge funds and big banks that like the secrecy of the status quo.”

A Washington Post news story said the Grassley political intelligence amendment, combined with another amendment, “transformed the (insider trading) bill into the most sweeping ethics legislation Congress had considered since 2007.”